UNM students work on sprucing up Route 66

The City of Albuquerque and the UNM School of Architecture and Planning teamed up to find ways to spruce up Route 66 through Albuquerque.

Students came up with renderings and designs to help the city rehabilitate parts of Central Ave. Some ideas include creating walkways over I-25, adding more parks and open-air markets along Central.

The idea is to create spaces that bring people together, just like the Route 66 of the 1950’s.

“We will take some of these projects and we'll take the ones that we think are the most applicable and we will start thinking of ways of implementing those either in its current form or a variation of that form up and down central avenue and we'll be looking for projects to do," Mayor Richard Berry said.

The students are in a class called City Lab. The City gave UNM space downtown to hold the class.

Instead of collecting rent, which would equal $50,000/year, the city is tapping into the brains of the faculty and students and plan on implementing some of the designs and ideas into reality.